Wales

Economy

N Wales is characterized by farms and pastoral highlands. There had been some industrial development around the coal fields centered on Wrexham, but the fields have largely been closed. The coastal towns of the Lleyn Peninsula (Gwynedd) are tourist and vacation centers for N England's industrial cities. The industrial wealth of Wales is concentrated in the southern counties bordering on the Bristol Channel. This area has large steelworks (Port Talbot), oil refineries (Milford Haven), tinplate and copper foundries, and the once-rich S Wales coal fields. The southeast also has the greatest concentration of investment in Britain, predominantly in electronics. Other important industrial cities and ports are Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, and Tenby. The labor force has tended to drift into the southern industrial areas, leaving the north sparsely populated. With the decline of the coal industry, the Welsh economy has become increasingly reliant on consumer electronics, automotive parts, chemicals, and tourism, information technology, and other service-related industries.